Pre-World War II pacifists and isolationists were rarely
identified as fraternal associates by their war-era critics. In
fact, despite their common opposition to United States involvement
in foreign wars, journalists and scholars usually distinguished
between the two groups and occasionally portrayed them as being
ultimately antagonistic to one another. From this viewpoint, their
relationship could be seen as analogous to that of Communists and
Fascists, both opponents of liberal capitalism, both proponents of
the authoritarian state, but both representing antithetical
political extremes.

Especially if his anti-war position was grounded in Christian
dogma, the pacifist was often accorded understanding, respect, and
deferment from the draft. The isolationist, however, was frequently
vilified. The two were distinguished, in part, on the basis of
their alleged motives and world views. The pacifist was seen as an
idealistic, if somewhat impractical, subscriber to international
brotherhood and morality. The isolationist was condemned as a
suspicious, niggardly and myopic chauvinist. The isolationist was
also faulted for his inconsistency or relativity on the issue of
war; some warfare he approved (if confined to the Western
Hemisphere), while he opposed any warfare for an international
cause. As Alexander DeConde has pointed out, "isolationism became
charged with derogatory meaning. To some it became a dirty
word."1

Subsequent to 1950, historians and political scientists
gradually softened such rigid characterizations, treating
isolationists with greater dispassion and sophistication.
Consequently, the distinction between pacifists and isolationists
faded, and various overlapping noninterventionist categories were
created, sometimes with hyphenated terminology. Thus, John C.
Donovan identified "two very different groups" of congressional
isolationists, and he included pacifism as "a strand of American
isolationism."2 Donald Drummond divided those who opposed the
nation's involvement in war into three groups: "pacifists,
internationalists, and nationalists or isolationists." According to
Drummond, "all favored peace, but isolationists took a narrower
position" than the others, viewing "war as an activity from which
the United States should abstain except for immediate
self-defense."3 Alexander DeConde recognized that "in the twentieth
century we have had `isolationisms' rather than `isolationism',"
and he included anti- militarism and pacifism among isolationist
elements.4 More specific nomenclature was provided by Robert Dahl,
who categorized a "pacifist- isolationist-reformist" group in
Congress (and implied the existence of the
"pacifist-isolationist-conservative"), which was "isolationist
because of its pacifism; its members looked upon war as a destroyer
of life and welfare."5

Later scholars did not completely accept Dahl's suggestion that
some isolationists were motivated essentially by their abhorrence
of war, or pacifism. Selig Adler's lengthy overview of
twentieth-century isolationism made only limited reference to
pacifism as a significant part of the isolationist impulse.6 While
Manfred Jonas recognized the "fear of war" and pacifism manifested
by many isolationists, he nevertheless contrasted them with
"genuine pacifists."7 Among historians of the American pacifist
movement, John K. Nelson portrayed isolationism and pacifism as
"uncomfortable partners," and Lawrence S. Wittner wrote: "at the
hard core of isolationism lay a belligerent nationalism,
indifferent to the existence of foreign nations. . . . The peace
movement marched to a different drummer."8

However, isolationism and pacifism were not always uncomfortable
in or out of step in their mutual association. In the case of
United States Senator Rush D. Holt (D) they coexisted as indistinct
allies in an uncompromising resistance to America's intervention in
a second world war. During his meteoric Senate career, Holt managed
to occupy in succession Robert Dahl's two categories of
"pacifist-isolationist- reformist" and
"pacifist-isolationist-conservative."

When elected in 1934, Rush Holt of Weston was the youngest
person ever to win a seat in the United States Senate. Having
waited since the general election to attain his thirtieth birthday,
as required by the Constitution, he was sworn into office in June
1935. He had won fame and high office in West Virginia as a
champion of the common man and a critic of privately owned utility
corporations. He benefitted from the enthusiastic backing of the
United Mine Workers of America, and the blessing of West Virginia's
Senator Matthew M. Neely (D). Though he proclaimed himself an
unequivocal supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, most knowledgeable
observers (critics and sympathizers alike) viewed Holt as
politically left of the president.

Soon after his accession to the Senate, Holt underwent a
remarkable political metamorphosis. Believing himself denied a fair
share of the patronage emanating from federal relief programs, he
began in 1936 by attacking the Works Progress Administration for
political corruption and inefficiency. Within months he emerged as
one of the New Deal's most vocal conservative critics. Proudly
independent, he sacrificed his alliance with Franklin Roosevelt,
Matthew Neely, the United Mine Workers, and most rank and file
Democrats in West Virginia. By maverick and impolitic behavior he
condemned himself to a single Senate term. In the primary election
of 1940 Holt placed only third in his bid for renomination. Though
he remained politically active and later joined the Republican
party, Holt failed to win another high office. 9

Holt's quixotic style could make him a questionable subject for
logical analysis on an important public issue. But the "Boy
Senator" always claimed philosophical consistency. Partly
self-deceived and perhaps a little disingenuous, he viewed himself
as faithful to pristine "liberal" and "progressive" values, while
Roosevelt-style "big government" and John L. Lewis-inspired "big
labor" trampled individual liberty. On at least one important
matter Holt remained steadfast: throughout his Senate career and
afterward, he opposed any American involvement in overseas warfare.
After World War II began in Europe, Holt devoted himself to the
noninterventionist cause at the expense of most other concerns. As
Nebraska Senator Gerald P. Nye (R) later recalled, Holt was the
only easterner in the Senate, with the exception of Massachusetts's
David I. Walsh (D), who "stood by his guns" on the war issue.10
Holt took a stand without regard to political consequence and was
motivated by isolationist and pacifistic feelings and principles.
Though Holt did not fit the precise definition of a pacifist, his
isolationism was determined chiefly by his abhorrence of war. A
conditional but deeply felt pacifism was the chief wellspring for
his unrelenting isolationism.

Holt viewed war as destructive of constitutional liberties,
unnecessarily sacrificial of human life and material goods, and in
most cases immoral. His pacifism was not dictated by religious
scruples, for he held no firm theological convictions at the time.
Nor did he condemn every war as unjustifiable; a war clearly in the
defense of one's beleaguered and peace-loving homeland was
legitimate. Like most of the noninterventionists prior to World War
II, Holt discounted the likelihood of an unprovoked attack against
the United States. Therefore, a European or an Asian war,
regardless of the ultimate outcome, did not require American
involvement. Holt's concept of homeland frontiers was limited to
the forty-eight states. A strict anti-imperialist, Holt opposed
North American military and economic intrusions into Latin America,
and he was indifferent toward Canada, provided the United States
had no presence or commitment there. At issue between Holt and most
interventionists were their differing values. The latter believed
in the efficacy of war to protect national interests, including
those beyond the continent. The former viewed war as a greater evil
than the threatened loss of peripheral or external interests, even
those quite close to home.

Holt's conditional pacifism was rooted in his parentage. His
father was a colorful small-town physician and horse trader. A
political iconoclast and atheist, Dr. Matthew Holt abandoned the
Republican party for William Jennings Bryan in the 1890s, and in
the following decade supported the socialism of Eugene V Debs.12
Steadfast in his opposition to war, Matthew Holt attended the 1917
convention of the Socialist party in St. Louis and participated in
the condemnation of America's role in the "Great Crusade" abroad.
Consequently, the Holt family suffered at the hands of irate
patriots in central West Virginia. There were banner headlines,
surly mobs, and a flying brick which struck Mrs. Holt as she stood
on her front porch. The Holt children were also harassed. The local
school superintendent denounced their father before a school
assembly and allegedly attempted to have Rush's grades
reduced.13

Holt maintained the family tradition from his first arrival in
Washington as a senator, where he contributed actively to pacifist
objectives. In 1935, America was undergoing an agonized reaction to
World War I. Holt needed no convincing, but he was impressed by the
findings of Senator Nye's Special Committee to Investigate the
Munitions Industry and by Helmut Englebrecht's Merchants of
Death. Subsequently, he undertook a series of public
appearances in support of the anti-war movement. In a CBS broadcast
in June 1935, Holt urged young people to campaign to end war. "The
problem of youth is to break down this militaristic propaganda that
would send our youth onto the battlefields to die," he said.14
During the summer he delivered several additional radio addresses
under the auspices of the National Council for Prevention of War.
For a while, he considered undertaking a coast-to-coast crusade
against war, but concluded that Senate demands were more
pressing.15

Holt believed that to avoid war the United States must maintain
strict neutrality in the event of conflict among other nations.
Holt considered the Neutrality Act of 1935, which forbade the
exportation of munitions to belligerents, "a wonderful step in the
right direction." But he favored stiffer legislation which would
ban American loans to nations at war. Loans, he said, were "more
dangerous than arms" on the slippery road to war.16 Predictably, he
supported the neutrality acts of 1936 and 1937, along with every
amendment which would have made them more stringent.17

Holt also opposed Franklin Roosevelt's request for authority to
discriminate between peace-loving and aggressor nations in the
application of the neutrality laws. "The minute a government
chooses an aggressor that minute we are in the war," Holt wrote for
the New York Journal and American. "What does neutral mean?
It means refraining from interference in a contest. When we choose
sides we are interfering."18 When Italy threatened Ethiopia in
1935, the senator's suggestion was, "America should stay out of
it."19 During the Spanish Civil War, Holt was besieged with letters
and cards urging the United States to act in behalf of one side or
the other. He answered them with a declaration in favor of "strict,
mandatory neutrality."20

Though Holt sometimes prefaced his remarks on foreign policy
with a perfunctory endorsement of "a strong national defense," his
conduct reflected the anti-militarism inherent in his pacifism. As
a member of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, he opposed every
administration request for increased military spending.21 Holt
believed that reckless militarization would actually enhance the
risk of American involvement in a war, reasoning that a well-armed
nation is more likely to resort to arms than a weak one. Therefore,
the United States would be more secure with a small army and navy.
The "big Navy" proposals of the late 1930s especially alarmed the
senator. Franklin Roosevelt, he once noted, "likes to play with
boats. The country would be safer if he had some other hobby."22
Holt opposed a five hundred million dollar request for the navy in
1937 on the grounds that "defense does not include the building of
ships to transport airplanes and troops to foreign soil."23 He was
a vocal leader of the opposition to the 1938 Naval Expansion Bill
sponsored by Representative Carl Vinson (D) of Georgia. By
threatening a filibuster against the measure, he helped extend
debate for two and a half weeks before it eventually won Senate
approval.24 In February 1939, Holt sought unsuccessfully to limit
the construction of new warplanes, which he viewed as potentially
offensive and bound for the European conflict.25

Clearly, the "Boy Senator" had manifested pacifist traits prior
to the 1939 war declarations. It remains to be shown that Holt
expressed his pacifism unflinchingly in isolationist terminology.
Some bitter-end noninterventionists, such as senators Burton K.
Wheeler (D) of Montana and Gerald P Nye, objected to the
"isolationist" label pinned to them by interventionists. Some
claimed that they always favored internationalism in peaceful ways,
while opposing military entanglement or "collective security."26 In
contrast, Holt was an unabashed isolationist, who did not mind
keeping the nation aloof from the international community in peace
as well as war. Sharing his father's distaste for President Woodrow
Wilson's Treaty of Versailles, he never favored American membership
in the League of Nations, and in 1935 would have voted against
World Court membership (the vote came before he officially took his
Senate seat). Throughout his Senate term he opposed the reciprocal
trade agreements program and faithfully represented the pro-tariff
glass industry of West Virginia.27 Holt's single concession to
internationalism was his attendance at the 1939 conference of the
Inter-Parliamentary Union in Oslo, where he was chairman of the
American delegation assigned to study the reduction of armaments.
However, he afterward condemned participation in the Inter-
Parliamentary Union by congressmen as useless junketing.28 Holt's
ardor for insulating the nation from war heightened with the danger
after the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939.
Isolation, rigid neutrality and anti-militarism remained his
prescription for avoiding war. Chiefly a propagandist during his
remaining months in the Senate, Holt engaged in lengthy, sometimes
acrimonious Senate debates, traveled hundreds of miles for numerous
speaking appearances, and delivered dozens of national and local
radio broadcasts. Any rewards he realized from his proselytizing
were intrinsic. It did not promote his already doubtful chance to
win re-election to the Senate, he received little remuneration, and
the travel undermined his health. His reputation was blackened by
the "internationalist" press, and some of his associations during
the crusade tainted him at considerable cost to his political
future.29 Of course, in September 1939 most Americans, including
the president, formally favored "neutrality." Roosevelt promptly
applied the neutrality laws, then successfully called upon Congress
to substitute a "cash and carry" policy for the arms embargo, and
as part of the deal, to prohibit American ships from entering
specified "danger zones." Roosevelt, and even some of the more
determined noninterventionists, depicted the amendments as
supportive of neutrality. But many isolationists and pacifists,
including Rush Holt, opposed any tampering with the arms embargo.
Holt viewed it as a first fateful step over the precipice to
war.

On October 18, he expressed his view in a bitterly intoned
day-long address to a handful of colleagues on the Senate floor. He
underscored his theme with a rhetorical question: "Shall the United
States of America become a merchant of death?" With the pacifist's
indignation, he condemned the immorality of the munitions industry
and the perfidious folly of changing rules in the course of a war
in order to benefit one side at the expense of the other. The
United States, he continued, was not threatened by attack from any
nation. The nation's greatest peril was the deluding of Americans
by British propaganda, which undermined true neutrality and
prepared the public for eventual entry into the war.

Holt's fear of war blinded him to the distinctions others made
between the "fascist aggressors" and the "peace-loving
democracies." In Holt's words, "that great `democracy' [Britain]
for which we are called upon to defend has an empire of nearly
600,000,000 people, which was gained by the sword. France has 4.6
million square miles of colonies." The senator systematically cited
British "atrocities" against the Irish and the Boers, the British
"betrayal" of Czechoslovakia at Munich, and the British "lies" to
Arabs and Jews over the Palestine question. German aggression he
conveniently attributed to the "unjust and punitive Versailles
Treaty which caused untold suffering for the German people."
Furthermore, he pointed out, it was Britain which had helped rearm
Germany in recent years. Returning to the moral question of war,
Holt concluded: "My vote will not be a vote for death; it will be a
vote for peace, for I intend to vote to continue the embargo on
arms, ammunition, and implements of war."30

Holt's remonstrances against the "cash and carry" amendment
revealed his dislike for Great Britain and France. This opposition
did not signify a sympathy for Nazi Germany. While he was
invariably harsh in judgement of the Allies, Holt never expressed
admiration for Hitler's Germany or any fascist state.31 Normally,
he was cynical toward any belligerent's claim to moral
righteousness. He often condemned what he called the "Sir Galahad"
philosophy of international relations, which distinguishes between
"good" and "bad" nations, "peace-loving" and "war-making" nations,
"democracies" and "dictatorships."32 However, one international
conflict in early 1940 curiously affected his conscience. That was
the "Winter War," wherein the Soviet Union attacked neighboring
Finland. While he could see "wrongs on both sides" in the
German-Anglo-French conflict, Holt openly expressed sympathy for
Finland, "that great little country." He nevertheless voted against
a bill to extend a loan to Finland. "My sentiment was to vote for
the bill," he explained. "My judgement told me to vote against
it."33 In perhaps a more unusual departure from his isolationist
position, Holt had earlier sympathized with the beleaguered
republican government of Spain. Though several of his conservative
supporters expressed disapproval, the senator signed a 1938 letter
from about sixty congressmen extending "best wishes" to the Spanish
Parliament as it convened at the height of the civil war.34

On May 14, 1940, young Senator Holt suffered defeat in the West
Virginia primary. As a lame duck, he immersed himself unreservedly
in the pacifist-isolationist cause. The debates on Capitol Hill
escalated with the German spring offensive, and on June 3 Holt
challenged Florida Senator Claude Pepper (D), when the latter
demanded that Congress empower the president to sell arms to the
Allies. Holt asked how far Pepper would go to support Britain and
France in the event that limited aid failed to stop Germany. Pepper
replied that it was a bridge he would cross when necessary.35

This exchange revealed the widening chasm separating the
"internationalists" and the strict noninterventionists. The former
could now entertain even the prospect of a war declaration, when
during the previous autumn they had insisted that lifting the arms
embargo would only insure America's nonbelligerency. The latter
remained obdurate neutralists even while France collapsed before
the Nazi war machine. When the Roosevelt administration revealed on
June 6, 1940, the transfer of fifty American planes to the Allies,
Holt remarked acidly that the plane deal was "just edging toward a
declaration of war."36 Fearing that war could be presaged even by
humanitarian gestures, Holt declined on June 18 to give the
Senate's unanimous consent to a resolution empowering the president
to send Red Cross mercy ships into war zones.37

The main event in Congress that summer was the Burke-Wadsworth
Conscription Bill, the most controversial step taken to that date
toward war-readiness. The United States had never before enacted a
peacetime draft measure. Announcing his opposition to the bill soon
after it was introduced in mid-July by Nebraska Senator Edward
Burke (D) and New York Representative James Wadsworth (R), Holt was
quickly joined by many of the noninterventionists and also by the
highly respected Senator George Norris (R) of Nebraska, who
heretofore had supported preparedness measures. The ensuing
six-week debate was inordinately bitter, and Holt stood in the
vortex of stormy acrimony.

The peacetime draft seemed to repel him more than any of the
other steps on the road to war. Not only did it run counter to his
pacifistic feelings, but it embraced government regimentation of
the citizenry. Both as a fiery progressive in his early career and
later as a more orthodox conservative, Holt consistently defended
individual rights and freedoms. Conscription is "voluntary," he
quipped. "If you don't want to be drafted you can go to jail for
five years and pay a fine of $1O,000. I do@t like Hitlerized
methods in America to conquer Hitler overseas." The real purpose of
the draft bill, he predicted, was "to get an army for
overseas."38

While debating the draft bill on the Senate floor, Holt engaged
in a vitriolic and personal exchange with Sherman Minton (D) of
Indiana, whom Holt described as the "smear artist for the New
Deal."39 It began with formal remarks by Holt which questioned the
patriotism of some persons who were spearheading the conscription
drive, such as the membership of the exclusive Harvard Club of New
York City. They supported the draft, he said, because they were
people who would profit from another war. The "alien doctrine of
conscription . . . came from foreign shores and was incubated in
the banks and law firms . . . on Wall Street."40

Minton rose indignantly to complain that he was tired of
lectures about patriotism. He then alleged that during World War I
Holt's father had preached against even raising food to support
American soldiers in France, while sending Matthew, his eldest son,
to South America to avoid the draft. "I get a little impatient at
being lectured from a slacker family," he argued. "A malicious
lie," replied Holt. "If the administration wants filth to be thrown
they get the Senator from Indiana to throw it." Minton retorted,
"and when Hitler wants it thrown you throw it." With that Senate
Democratic majority leader Alben Barkley of Kentucky invoked the
rule prohibiting senators from making personal attacks on one
another. Momentarily defused, the "debate" re-ignited that
afternoon and on the following morning when the West Virginian
defended the "honest patriotism" of his deceased father.41

Holt was pleased by the fact that press reaction to his diatribe
with Minton was generally favorable.42 However, columnist Walter
Lippmann, whom the senator read regularly with respect, was
critical. Holt's offense, Lippmann wrote, "consisted in an effort
to degrade the debate about the merits of the conscription bill
into a class struggle between the rich and the poor." He concluded
that Holt's behavior had abused the privileges of his office and
debased the right of free speech.43

On several occasions prior to the final vote on the
Burke-Wadsworth bill, the unshaken West Virginian found
opportunities to address the Senate. His theme remained that of
alleged economic motivation on the part of the bill's sponsors.
Holt's stridency notwithstanding, the measure finally passed at the
end of August by a 58 to 31 vote.44

During autumn 1940, the general election campaign afforded Holt,
no longer a candidate, little opportunity for waging the anti-war
fight. Initiative in foreign policy lay entirely with the
president, and his opponents were only able to raise vain protests
to the seriatim steps taken to aid Great Britain. In September the
"destroyers for bases" deal was announced as an executive fait
accompli. Threatening a "full discussion" of the transaction,
Holt was only able to complain that the deal "was not the American
way of doing things."45

In December the "Boy Senator"retired from the Senate at age 35,
brooding over the likelihood of war under Franklin Roosevelt's
leadership. His pessimism was reflected in an article published by
the New York Journal and American. "Get ready, America, we
are going to be asked to repeal the Johnson Act which prohibits
loans to defaulters and to amend the Neutrality Act which was
passed to keep this country out of war. . . . I believe in being
frank. The move was to get us in the war and they knew it had to be
done gradually."46

During 1941, Holt maintained his residence in Washington and
modestly supported himself as a lecturer and author. Chief among
his literary endeavors was the assembling of two anti-war
manuscripts which he hoped would be published as books and sold at
a profit. In June, Holt signed a contract with Flanders Hall
Publishers of Scotch Plains, New Jersey, a firm headed by Sigfrid
Hauck. Holt's books were tentatively entitled Who's Who Among
the Warmongers and The British Network in America, and
were little more than compilations of his Senate speeches on these
subjects. He promoted them as "straight from the shoulder attacks
on the war crowd."47

After a personal investment of several hundred dollars and the
preparation of page proofs, the deal with Flanders Hall collapsed.
Holt learned that the company was registered with the State
Department for anti-British publication, and he backed out of the
contract. "Wish I could go over the situation personally," Holt
wrote apologetically to Sigfrid Hauck. "I'm sure that you will
agree with me about the matter. It will do no one good . . . to
allow the enemies who want to plunge into the war to get anything
that they would use . . . to injure the cause of peace."48

After Hauck was arrested as a foreign agent, Ralph Townsend,
publisher of the isolationist Scribner's Commentator, showed
interest in Holt's books, but the declaration of war following the
Pearl Harbor attack made it pointless. Several weeks afterward,
staff members of Scribner's were indicted by a federal grand
jury for selling literature to certain fascist foreigners, and Holt
wrote a letter of reference for Townsend which attested to the
defendant's American patriotism. On the advice of California
Senator Hiram Johnson (R), he rejected the offer of several friends
who were willing to help him publish Who's Who Among the
Warmongers in order to prove that there was nothing seditious
in it.49

Holt's associations with extreme right-wingers during the
anti-war crusade begs the question of whether anti-Semitic or
anti-democratic prejudices rather than pacifism-isolationism might
have triggered his actions. Among Holt's friends and supporters
were the charismatic founders of the Union party, Father Charles E.
Coughlin and Gerald L. K. Smith, both of whom engaged in virulent
verbal and written attacks on Jews. As a senator, Holt did little
to discourage the frequent anti-Semitic correspondence from George
Deatherage, a resident of St. Albans. The senator also received
plentiful mail from other reactionaries, many racist oriented, who
considered him sympathetic. When once warned that Joe E. Williams,
leader of the fascist Christian Mobilizers, planned to invite Holt
as a guest speaker, the senator replied, "you say that if I speak
for the organization I will run the danger of being labelled
pro-Nazi. This does not scare me for such a thing would not convict
me of being such a person. Just because a man is labelled something
does not convict him of the crime."50

These relations notwithstanding, it would be incorrect to infer
that Holt was motivated by native fascist or racist views.
Opposition to American participation in the war seemed to be the
single touchstone of his personal dealings during those months. On
at least one occasion he was happy to appear with the Socialist
Norman Thomas whom he greatly respected for his pacifistic and
"progressive" views.51 He also made anti-war addresses before
Jewish groups, counted several West Virginia Jews as longtime
friends and political supporters, and eschewed racial or religious
jokes and slurs in his personal language.52 With respect to
political ideology, Holt was an established "conservative" opponent
of the New Deal, a conservatism not inclined toward
authoritarianism. Rather, he accused New Deal "liberals" of
ignoring individual liberties in favor of autocratic social
programs.

Though his efforts as an author in 1941 proved abortive, the
former senator succeeded as a public lecturer. Most of his
opportunities were provided through the sponsorship of the America
First Committee, an influential group of politicians and other
public figures opposed to Roosevelt's foreign policy. Although the
committee came under frequent attack as being anti-Semitic and
sympathetic to fascism, it played an important role in organizing
noninterventionist sentiment nationwide. Holt did not seek his role
with America First, having received an anxious appeal on August 4
from George B. Baldwin, secretary of the committee's National
Speakers' Bureau. But he accepted and embarked almost immediately,
though Baldwin promised only to pay expenses. There were no funds
for fees.53

During the ensuing four months, Holt traveled with his new bride
mainly by private automobile, sometimes by airplane, on a
twenty-five thousand mile coast-to-coast junket. At dozens of
rallies from Los Angeles to Boston he was usually the featured
speaker, although in Grand Junction, Colorado, he received second
billing in the presence of famed pilot Laura Ingalls.54

In his addresses Holt stressed that the Roosevelt administration
was seeking to maneuver the United States into the European war.
When, for example, the public was informed that American destroyers
had been fired upon by German submarines, Holt blamed Franklin
Roosevelt, not Adolf Hitler. ". . . I believe the crowd in
Washington was hoping that there would be some American casualties
that would create an incident to take us into the war."55

Since the first amending of the Neutrality Act in November 1939,
Holt had been pessimistic about the likelihood of America's
avoiding war. However, two years later the enthusiastic response of
sometimes overflow audiences buoyed his spirit and gave rise to
optimism. Having often predicted that the first steps in aid to the
Allies would lead inevitably to war, Holt now sensed that, in spite
of Roosevelt's machinations, the final barrier against a formal war
declaration was increasingly formidable. Appearing in Denver on
November 17, he asserted: "America can keep out of the war if
American citizens keep fighting against `steps to war through the
back door'." He noted that "enthusiasm for our cause is gaining
ground. America First meetings have outdrawn intervention committee
meetings by anywhere from five to one to ten to one."56 In Salt
Lake City a day later, Holt predicted that opponents of the war
would soon have a majority in Congress. He ascribed a rise in
anti-war declaration sentiment (confirmed by public opinion polls)
to a realization on the part of Americans that they had been taken
to the precipice of war through "subterfuge, hypocrisy and
dishonesty."57

The America First coalition and Holt's tour ended, of course,
with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Even then, Holt was
unwilling to concede that there would be no future return to the
sanctuary of isolationism and pacifism. This he revealed in a
January 1942 letter to R. Douglas Stuart, Jr., former director of
the America First Committee. "Our fight is not over. We must stand
guard to see that the internationalists who wanted war from the
first day of September, 1939, are not allowed to determine the
future of our great country. They would commit us to everlasting
wars everywhere."58

Embittered, especially by the accusations of pro-Nazi
sympathies, but undeterred, Holt early conceived of a strategy by
which the internationalists might someday be exposed. He outlined a
course of action in a letter of April 28, 1942, to George N. Peek,
the agricultural theorist of Moline, Illinois:

"If this country is committed to the policy of forever policing
the world, we have lost the war. To win this war does not require
us to follow Roosevelt and Wilkie [sic] into
internationalism. The international crowd is a motley group. It
contains New Dealers, communists, anglophiles, international
bankers, and all these individuals can control. They are
coordinating their program to silence any opposition. . . .

"That brings me to a point I think very important. We should
plan also. We should start building now to stop internationalism
from taking over America. We should gather facts, figures and data
to meet the challenge."59

Illness from cancer and a religious conversion in 1946 mellowed
Holt's bitterness somewhat without changing his basic
pacifist-isolationist philosophy. In 1948 he attended and actively
participated in an international conference of Moral Rearmament in
Switzerland.60 He regained full admission to mainstream politics as
the nearly successful gubernatorial nominee of West Virginia
Republicans in 1952.

Holt's premature death in 1955 at age 49 preceded the revival of
latter-day "neo-isolationism" and "selective pacifism." Certainly,
he would have observed with ironic satisfaction the mutual harmony
of these terms as expressed by opponents of American military
intervention in Southeast Asia. Like many protestors of the 1960s
and 1970s, Holt was strident, sometimes ill-mannered, moralistic
and self- righteous in his campaign against militarism and war
through "internationalism." He warned the nation against becoming
the "policeman of the world" long before the epigram grew trite.
Though Holt was an isolationist for many reasons, it was chiefly
abhorrence of war, anti-imperialism, and belief in individual
liberty and constitutional government that motivated his foreign
policy views. Holt was a conditional, or selective pacifist, who
pursued peace through the regimen of strict isolationism.

Notes

1. Alexander DeConde, "On Twentieth Century Isolationism," in
Isolation and Security, ed. by Alexander DeConde (Durham,
NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1957), 5. Typical of scholars who
distinguished between isolationists and pacifists was Frederick L.
Schuman, who viewed opponents of Franklin Roosevelt's collective
security suggestions as a "motley crowd of pacifists, appeasers,
isolationists, enemy agents and muddleheads," in Night Over
Europe (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1941), 553. Some critics of the
isolationists faulted them for moral laxity or other personality
defects. Forrest Davis and Ernest K. Lindley cited their "smugness,
based on a continental state of mind, an indifference to and
ignorance of the world about us," in How War Came: An American
White Paper (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942), 316. Walter
Johnson faulted the American public for so belatedly accepting its
responsibility in the moral struggle against fascism and
totalitarianism, in Battle Against Isolation (Chicago: Univ.
of Chicago Press, 1944), 1-5. Allan Nevins described the "cynicism"
of many isolationists who attempted "to destroy all distinctions
between nations democratic and totalitarian, peace-loving and
aggressive, painting them in nearly the same hues," in The New
Deal and World Affairs, A Chronicle of International Affairs,
1933-1945 (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1950), 40-41. In
his 1950 presidential address at the annual dinner of the American
Historical Association, Samuel Eliot Morison castigated fellow
historian Charles Beard, and especially his President Roosevelt
and the Coming of War published in 1948. Beard's disservice,
according to Morison, was that he left a generation of American
youth utterly unprepared for a "war they had to fight," American
Historical Review 56(1950-51): 261-75.

2. John C. Donovan, "Congressional Isolationists and the
Roosevelt Foreign Policy," World Politics 3(April 1951):
299-316, reprinted in Causes and Consequences of World War
II, ed. by Robert A. Devine (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969).
Donovan identified the two brands of isolationists with key Senate
personalities: the "Johnson-Borah group" and the
"Nye-Clark-Vandenburg group."

3. Donald Drummond, The Passing of American Neutrality, 1937-
1941 (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1955), 27. For
Drummond, the isolationists' real end was "national security." He
did not specify avoidance of war as a possible ultimate purpose of
some isolationists. Ibid., 19.

29. George Creel authored a humiliating article on Holt,
entitled "Youngest and Loudest," Collier's 19(December
1936): 17. In "The Senate Reseated: A Working Blueprint,"
Life 3(29 November 1937): 20-21, Holt was labeled
"natural-born-hell-raiser"in a class by himself. Holt was smeared
occasionally as a Nazi supporter by Walter Winchell and a few other
columnists (see Holt to Gerald L. K. Smith, 8 March 1942,
Holt Coll.). An editorial in the New York Herald Tribune, 17
September 1940, suggested that Holt could not better serve the
cause of Nazi Germany if he were a paid enemy agent. Holt's
campaign for a congressional seat in 1944 was damaged by
publication of reports on the sedition cases involving German
agents in the United States. Holt's dealings with Flanders Hall
Publishers and Scribner's Commentator were revealed to the
public, and Holt was listed with congressmen Stephen A. Day,
Hamilton Fish, Jr., and Ernest Lundeen as having "collaborated"
with George Sylvester Vierech, later convicted as a German agent,
in O. John Rogge's The Official German Report: Nazi Penetration,
1924-1942; Pan Arabism, 1939-Today (New York: T. Yoseloff,
1961), 156-71, 272-73.

51. Washington Post, 2 August 1940. Unable to attend a
testimonial dinner for Thomas on his fifty-second birthday, Holt
expressed admiration for the Socialist leader to John Dewey. "Mr.
Thomas is one of America's foremost thinkers. He has been known for
his battles to assist those injured by the wrongs of an economic
system. I admire the high plane of Mr. Thomas' lectures and
writings," 16 November 1936, Holt Coll.